A new investigation has debunked the Department of Homeland Security’s claim that assaults against immigration enforcement officers have skyrocketed this year.
In September, President Donald Trump wrote in a memo that “riots” in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, had to led to a “more than 1,000 percent increase in attacks” on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
The agency also said last month that ICE agents had been assaulted 238 times between late January and late November of this year, compared to 19 times during the same period in 2024. That represents an increase of 1,153 percent.
DHS, however, has refused to release a complete list of the alleged assaults, and there have been signs—including the case of a Washington, D.C., man who was charged with assault after he threw a hoagie sandwich at a Border Patrol agent—that the department’s claims are inflated.
Now, an analysis by the Los Angeles Times has revealed the extent to which DHS appears to be exaggerating its claims of violence against federal officers.
A review of court records in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Portland found that assaults on federal officers were up by just 26 percent.
The paper reviewed cases related to alleged assaults on all federal law enforcement officers—not just immigration agents—and found there had been 163 cases in those five cities this year, compared to 129 cases last year.
Of those, ICE agents were described as victims in about 60 percent of the cases.
In more than half of the 163 cases that were scrutinized, the officer who was allegedly assaulted did not suffer any physical injury. In about 30 percent of the cases, the officer sustained minor injuries such as bruising.
In just 16 percent of the cases, or 26 out 163, the officer was seriously injured or needed medical attention. One was tased, while another was smashed in the head with a rock.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the Times in a statement that officers were “facing terrorist attacks” and had been assaulted, shot at, hit with cars, and faced doxing and bomb threats.
In fact, the only time a federal law enforcement officer was shot during an immigration raid was when a bullet from an ICE agent’s gun accidentally hit a deputy U.S. marshal in Los Angeles in October, the Times reported.
The Daily Beast has reached out to DHS for comment.
Charis Kubrin, a professor of law, criminology, and sociology at UC Irvine, said that the baseline number of assaults against law enforcement officers was so low that emphasizing a 1,000 percent increase, even if true, would be misleading.
“This is what we call in sociology a moral panic,” which is created with statistics are used to make a problem seem bigger than it is, she said.
In many of the cases the Times reviewed, defendants were arrested and charged with assault after immigration agents first shoved them, hit them, or even struck them with a car.
In June, Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino told immigration agents to “arrest as many people that touch you as you want to.”
“Everybody f—ing gets it if they touch you,” he said. “This is our f—ing city.”
John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE director during the Obama administration, told the Times that ICE’s own tactics were driving the increase in incidents involving the public.
Prosecutors have filed charges against defendants who supposedly assaulted officers with a hat, a work bag, a tambourine, the corner of a flag, and umbrella that weighed less than a pound, and of course a Subway sandwich.
Juries, however, have refused to return a guilty verdict in many of the cases, including that of the hoagie sandwich hurler in Washington D.C.
More than one-third of the cases the Times reviewed ended in dismissals or acquittals; none have ended in conviction at a trial.
The post Trump’s Claim About Attacks on ICE Agents Completely Blown Apart appeared first on The Daily Beast.
